If your company operates on a tight budget, it’s easy to think digital marketing may be too expensive.
But what if you could connect with more customers, boost your brand's image, and grow your business without breaking the bank? That’s exactly what social media can help you achieve.
Social media isn’t just for big brands with huge marketing budgets or influencers posting cute cat videos. It can also be a real game-changer for small-business owners.
Social media puts your company right in front of your audience, and it’s super affordable. With just a smartphone and a little creativity, you can show off your products, share your story, and build lasting relationships with your customers.
Why Social Media Is Essential for Small-Business Growth
With more than 5 billion users, social media is a great way to boost your online visibility, reach more people who are interested in your products, and increase your sales.
In a recent study, more than 96% of participants said their companies used social media marketing to boost their brand awareness, while 72% leveraged it to obtain new customers. Your small business can enjoy these benefits as well.
Choosing the Right Platforms for Your Business
When looking to get the most out of social media, there are multiple popular platforms you can use, including:
- TikTok
- X (formerly Twitter)
However, not every platform will be suitable for your business. For this reason, you need to figure out where your potential customers spend most of their time. The following tips will help you pick the right social media platforms:
- Know your audience: What are your customers’ demographics (e.g., age, gender, location)? This information will help you decide on the most appropriate platform for your content. For instance, if your audience consists mainly of young adults, TikTok might be the best fit because 56% of U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 34 say they use the platform.
- Focus on where your competitors are active: If organizations like yours are thriving on a particular platform, chances are that your audience is there, too.
- Consider the nature of your business: Do you sell directly to end consumers (B2C) or other businesses (B2B)? Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are popular options for B2C brands, while LinkedIn is often the best choice for B2B companies.
Building Direct Connections With Your Customers
One of the coolest things about social media is that it allows small businesses to use interactive content to engage customers.
For example, if you want to know what new product line your audience might be interested in, you can run a quick poll. When you have a special announcement, you can share it through social media stories or go live to interact with your customers in real time.
With interactive social media content, you can build a highly engaged community by facilitating a two-way conversation. Customers become active participants rather than passive observers, making them feel seen, heard, and appreciated. You also gain insights into customers’ opinions, preferences, and burning issues, which you can use to improve your products or services.
Using Social Media Insights to Improve Your Strategy
To measure your social media performance and optimize your strategy, you don’t need all of the fancy, expensive analytics solutions that bigger companies often use.
All major social media platforms provide performance data that you can access for free. These analytics will show you how your audience responds to your posts so you can see what’s working and what’s not. You can then use these insights to optimize your social media campaigns and get better marketing results.
Here are some tips for refining your marketing strategy based on your social media insights:
- Check out your engagement metrics: Identify the posts with the most likes, shares, or comments. This will reveal what type of content excites your audience so you can create more of it.
- Keep an eye on your followers: Most platforms reveal your audience’s age, gender, location, and interests. These details can help you personalize your social media content based on your audience’s needs, motives, and problems, leading to more engagement.
Leveraging Influencers and Customer-Generated Content
Mega-influencers on social media can help you reach hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people, but you’ll need to spend big bucks on such partnerships.
That’s why small businesses should work with micro-influencers, whose followers typically range from 10,000 to 100,000. This way, you can still reach a broad audience, but at a more affordable rate.
Micro-influencers can introduce your business to their loyal following through sponsored posts, product reviews, or brand mentions, boosting your brand awareness. Also, the right influencers have a community of followers who are already interested in what you sell, so partnering with them helps you reach your target audience, which is better than marketing to a general audience.
Besides influencer marketing, you can also encourage your own customers to create and share the following types of content on social media:
- Testimonials
- Photos of them using your product
- Videos reviewing your offers
You can share customer-generated content on your social accounts to boost your brand’s credibility.
Balancing Paid Ads and Organic Growth
Finding the sweet spot between paid ads and organic growth (building your audience naturally) on social media doesn’t have to be tricky or expensive. Small businesses can make the most of both without breaking the bank.
For example, platforms like Facebook let you run ads for as little as $1 per day. This allows you to start small, test different strategies, and scale up your paid marketing campaigns once you see what works.
To increase your chances of going viral and growing your social following for free, create fascinating or helpful content that encourages likes and shares. This could include eye-opening infographics, engaging short-form videos, or interactive content.
Once you generate some traction organically, you can set a small budget to further boost the visibility of your best-performing posts.
The Easy Way to Improve Your Social Media Presence and Drive Business Growth
Social media has billions of active users, making it a powerful way for small businesses to reach a wider audience. It’s affordable, too — if you post social content organically, it may cost you nothing but time. Even with paid social ads, you can set a pocket-friendly budget.
Social media marketing can be cost-effective. However, not every small-business owner has the time, skills, or necessary team to implement an effective social media marketing strategy on their own.
The social media experts at Pyromaniac Digital can handle all of your digital marketing tasks for you, freeing up your time, increasing your lead generation, and driving business growth. Talk with a digital marketing expert today to see how we can help take your brand to the next level.
